had been bred in a luxurious establishment, and ⚫ was taught to regard its artificial and elaborate arrangement as essential to the production of a gentleman. He was a citizen" of no mean city," though we now look back upon New-York at that period, with its some eighteen or twenty thousand inhabitants, as little more than a village. There was then, resulting from the condition of America far more disparity between the facilities and refinements of town and country than there now is; and even now there are young citizens (and some citizens in certain illusions remain young all their lives) who look with the most self-complacent disdain on country breeding. Prior to our revolution, the distinctions of rank in the colonies were in accordance with the institutions of the old world. The coaches of the gentry were emblazoned with their family arms, and their plate with the family crest. If peers and baronets were rara aves, there were among the youths of Harvard "nephews of my lord," and "sons of Sir George and Sir Harry." These were, naturally, Meredith's first associates. He was himself of the privileged order and, connected with many a noble family in the mother country, he felt his aristocratic blood tingle in every vein. A large property, which had devolved to him on the death of his father, was chiefly vested in real estate in America, and his guardians, with the consent of his mother, who herself remained in England, had judiciously decided to educate

him where it would be most advantageous for him finally to fix his residence.

The external circumstances-the appliances and means of the two young men, were certainly widely different. Eliot Lee's parentage would not be deemed illustrious, according to any artificial code; but graduated by nature's aristocracy (nature alone sets a seal to her patents of universal authority), he should rank with the noble of every land. And he might claim what is now considered as the peculiar, the purest, the enduring, and in truth the only aristocracy of our own. He was a lineal descendant from one of the renowned pilgrim fathers, whose nobility, stamped in the principles that are regenerating mankind, will be transmitted by their sons on the Missouri and the Oregon, when the stars and garters of Europe have perished and are forgotten.

Colonel Lee, Eliot's father, was a laborious New-England farmer, of sterling sense and integrity in the phrase of his people, "an independent, fore-handed man;" a phrase that implies a property of four or five thousand dollars over and above a good farm, unencumbered with debts, and producing rather more than its proprietor, in his frugal mode of life, has occasion to spend. Eliot's mother was a woman of sound mind, and of that quick and delicate perception of the beautiful in nature and action, that is the attribute of sensibility and the proof of its existence, though the possessor,

like Eliot's mother, may, from diffidence or personal awkwardness, never be able to imbody it in graceful expression. She had a keen relish of English literature, and rich acquisitions in it; such as many of our ladies, who have been taught by a dozen masters, and instructed in half as many tongues, might well envy. With all this, she was an actual operator in the arduous labours that fall to the female department of a farming establishment-plain farmer Lee's plain wife. This is not an uncommon combination of character and condition in New-England. We paint from life, if not to the life our fault is not extravagance of colouring.

It is unnecessary to enter into the details of Eliot Lee's education. Circumstances combined to produce the happiest results-to develop his physical, intellectual, and moral powers; in short, to make him a favourable specimen of the highest order of New-England character. He had just entered on his academic studies, when his father (as our friend Effie intimated in her dark soothsaying) was lost while crossing Massachusetts Bay during a violent thunder-storm. Fortunately, the good colonel's forecast had so well provided for his heirs, that his widow was able to maintain the respectable position of his family without recalling her son from college. There, as many of our distinguished men have done, he made his acquisitions available for his support by teaching.

Meredith and Eliot Lee were soon acknowledged to be the gifted young men of their class. Though nearly equals in capacity, Eliot, being by far the most patient and assiduous, bore off the college honours. Meredith did not lack industry-certainly not ambition; but he had not the hardihood and self-discipline that it requires to forego an attractive pursuit for a dry study: and while Eliot, denying his natural tastes, toiled by the midnight lamp over the roughest academic course, he gracefully ran through the light and beaten path of belleslettres.

They were both social-Meredith rather gay in his disposition. Both had admirable tempers; Meredith's was partly the result of early training in the goodly seemings of the world, Eliot's the gift of Heaven, and therefore the more perfect. Eliot could not exist without self-respect. The applause of society was essential to Meredith. He certainly preferred a real to a merely apparent elevation; but experience could alone decide whether he were willing to pay its price-sustained effort, and generous sacrifice. Both were endowed with personal graces. Neither man nor woman, that ever we could learn, is indifferent to these.

Before the young men had proceeded far in their collegiate career they were friends, if that holy relation may be predicated of those who are united by accidental circumstances. That they were on a confidential footing will be seen by the following

conversation. Meredith was in his room, when, on hearing a tap at his door, he answered it by saying, "Come in, Eliot, my dear fellow. My good, or your evil genius, has brought you to me at the very moment when I am steeped to the lips in trouble."

"You in trouble! why-what is the matter?"

"Diable! matter enough for song or sermon. 'Not a trouble abroad but it lights o' my shoulders'

-First, here is a note from our reverend Præses. 'Mr. Jasper Meredith, junior class—you are fined, by the proper authority, one pound ten, for going into Boston last Thursday night, to an assembly or ball, contrary to college laws-as this is the first offence of the kind reported against you, we have, though you have been guilty of a gross violation of known duty, been lenient in fixing the amount of your fine.'-Lenient, good Præses !-Take instead one pound ten ounces of my flesh. My purse is far leaner than my person, though that be rather of the Cassius order.-Now, Eliot, is not this a pretty bill for one night's sorry amusementone pound ten, besides the price of two ball tickets, and sundry confections."

66

How, two ball tickets, Meredith ?"

Why, I gave one to the tailor's pretty sister, Sally Dunn."

'Sally Dunn!-Bravo, Meredith. Plebeian as you think my notions, I should hardly have escorted Sally Dunn to a ball."